Wednesday, 23 May 2012

Nora Roberts has her own particular genre – romance mixed with murder mystery – and it works well for me. She has a feisty central female character, usually in some kind of trouble or difficult situation, who becomes embroiled in a murder which impacts significantly on her life and manages at the same time to find some hunky guy to fall in love with.

In this novel, Reece Gilmore has decided to hide away in the small town of Angels Fist having been the sole survivor of a vicious attack in the Boston restaurant where she was a chef . She's pretty much on the edge, as nervy as hell and highly suspicious of everybody and everything but she's a great chef and soon finds a job in a local restaurant owned and run by Joanie, another strong , independent and capable woman .

Gradually, Reece gets to know and like many of the local residents including Brody, who is a writer who very much keeps to himself . But her fragile sense of peace is broken when she witnesses what she believes is a brutal murder of a woman in the mountains which are close to the town .

But no body has been found and there is a suspicion by many in the town that she's making the whole thing up. And her paranoia is increased when things mysteriously disappear in her flat above the restaurant . But Brody believes her and the two build up a strong friendship which develops into a romance .

Together, they compose a list of all the men in the area who could have committed such a crime and as they get closer to the truth , so their their lives are put in danger.

What I like about Roberts is that she tells a cracking good story with interesting plot, well rounded characters , evocative description of setting and intrigue and suspense in bucketloads . If this is the kind of novel you like to read, you've got plenty of novels to choose from - she's a prolific writer.